With development of storage technology, a storage device has a storage capacity which has been greatly improved, and the user can make use of the storage device to store aperiodically collected media files, so as to build a home media center.
In prior art, technical solutions commonly used for playing the media files stored in the storage device are: (1) a first solution of browsing and playing the media files by browsing directories and files level by level; (2) a second solution of searching the media files in a local hard disk according to a simple strategy, and storing a search result for a user.
Upon the analysis of actual application condition of the prior art, there may be several disadvantages. With regard to the first solution, when the directories in the storage device have complicated levels and the files therein have a large number and various formats, the operation process may be time-consuming, complicated, and inconvenient for the user to search for a media file or media files by browsing the directories level by level. With regard to the second solution, since the storage device is not resident in a STB (Set Top Box) terminal device, the user may have to frequently plug or unplug the storage device. As the second solution scans the files according to such a simple strategy, the files in storage device should be fully scanned again when the user plug the storage device, such that the user may not browse all the media files soon during scanning. In addition, when the directories in the storage device have complicated levels and the files therein have a large number, it takes a long time to scan all the files according to such a simple scanning strategy, thereby reducing efficiency of scanning local media files.